January 22, 2023- Week 9

We are on the mend. We are now both negative.  We will go back to work on Monday. 

I can say it now with some prospective. We finally had COVID. We had dodged that group of letters for almost three years. We were careful. We had our shots. We took the extra vitamins. We wore our masks. Yet it finally caught up with us. 

I tested positive first. That was a week ago Friday. It was rather scarey, seeing that little red line on the home test. When Julia started almost immediately feeling the symptoms we both sought medicial care on Saturday. That was not a sure things as our primary doctor did not work on Saturday and presumably had Monday off as well.

With an assist from UIHC Urgent Care on Saturday evening, we got the medication within 36 hours of our first test. This was after the other urgent care place we called suggested we wait until after the 3 day weekend was over and then call back. Not acceptable.

Although we got timely care, it was still a lost week. Fortunately it was a quiet week at work.

I will say that at least last weekend I did get outside and raked some leaves. There are always leaves to rake. This weekend,  not so much.

Last week in the contest the winner was the double bloodroot.

Here is the full vote

Every picture had real support.

This Week is Week 9 

Time marches on. Soon it will February. And that month is short.

#1 Clivia

 February 28, 2022

I have grown Clivia for probably 20 years. It comes from South Africa. We got the first plants from a friend named Sue. She lived in Iowa City. She had some clivia which would set side shoots every year or so. Whenever it would do that she would repot the plant, putting the side shoot in a separate pot.

The genus is Clivia. The species most often grown is Clivia miniata. 

It comes in orange and yellow with breeders working on other colors- like red.

After the plant flowers it makes a set of seeds, which then stay around for a a year before they ripen. I have grown plants from the seeds. 

It can take the plant at least 4 years to grow enough to flower. It can add 4 leaves a year. It will be ready to bloom when it has 13 leaves. You can do the math.

This time of year what I like the most about clivia is their winter care. I read that they absolutely want to rest for most of the winter. You are not to water them at all from October when they come inside until Febraury. 

I have followed this advice exactly.

While the pictured flower was in February, mostly the Clivia bloom in the summer.

#2 Daffodil Modern Art 

April 24, 2022

Modern Art was developed in the Netherlands in 1973. I got it about 20 years ago. It reliably comes back, but does not really spread. It is a midseason blooming daffodil. This bloomed about 2 weeks after the first one. 

#3 Shirley poppy closeup 

June 10, 2022

The centers of flowers can be amazing. This is another Shirley poppy. I started the first Shirley poppy seeds yesterday.

#4 Queen of the Night Epiphyllum 

September 10, 2022

This is what most people know as the Night Blooming Cereus. Purists would say it is not a cereus at all. Its botanical name is Epiphyllum oxypetalum.

It is from Central America. It does only bloom at night....unless it is cold and it is late in the season. Then you might get a picture early in the morning.

It will bloom more than once during the season. The first could be in late July. The second flowering can be in late September.

It blooms in flushes. I mean that it will set buds which will develop over a month, and then bloom almost all at one time.

Sometimes I would have some of these Queens in diferent parts of the yard. Remarkably they would bloom on the same night. This I understand is so that they can get pollen from another plant in order to be fertilized.

I have 4-5 of these oxypetalums. The biggest one was given to me in 2021, by someone who did not want to move it in and out of the house anymore. It found a place in a pot in the front yard. It is too big to be in a hanging basket.

It set about a dozen buds. They curve around right before it is going to bloom. That night however there were thunderstorms predicted.

I moved the entire plant to the front porch. 

That turned out to be a good idea.

#5 Colchicum 

September 13, 2022

Colchicums are the fall crocuses that are not true crocuses. They are probably related to the lycoris that we know of as naked ladies. At least the growth pattern is similiar. They send up foliage in the spring, that looks a little like hosta foliage. That dies down in June, with the flowers growing without leaves starting in September.

You can transplant them after they die down in the spring. They will then bloom starting in September.

Bonus Pictures

Clivia

These are clivia seedlings. After about a year the seed pods get soft. At that point you can peel off the covering and plant the seed. There is one seed per pod. If you wait about 4-5 years maybe it will bloom. 

This picture was taken about the same time as the contestant. It could have been included in the contest.

Daffodil slideshow from 2022

Night Blooming Cereus

The buds hang downward. When they get close to blooming they curve up. 

We brought a chair out to the front porch and enjoyed the visuals and the scent. They are fragrant, particularly if there are enough of them.

Right Now

Last weekend I noticed that many spring bulbs were waking up. This would be a large snowdrop clump.

There are negative numbers in the ten day forecast, for next weekend. These early bulbs are tough. They will just hunker down and wait a little bit. I think there is a lesson in there for what we should do.

This is a little lupine seedling, showing secondary leaves. It of course is inside. Lupines take about 10 days to germiniate.

Here is a little phalanopsis flower, in with the pink.

Julia's recipe

Rice Noodles and Shrimp

This recipe was called (by the NYT) Drunken Noodles. Nothing alcoholic about it. Apparently it can be thought of in Thailand as a hangover remedy. Or not. This is another in the panoply of rice noodle dishes (pad thai, San Francisco noodles, turkey pho) that are fast and tasty. And adaptable to what you have on hand. Some kind of protein, some kind of rice noodles, some kind of greenery, some kind of fresh herbs. Plus standard southeast Asian seasonings. It's really good. 

The ingredients:

1 8-oz. box of wide rice noodles;

1 or 2 hot peppers (I had serranos);

1 tablespoon of smushed garlic;

8 oz. (or so) shrimp;

3 cups (or so) of sliced baby bok choy;

1 cup (or so) fresh basil; and

3 tablespoons regular oil. 

The sauce:

2 tablespoons oyster sauce;

1 tablespoon soy sauce;

1 tablespoon fish sauce;

1-1/2 teaspoons white vinegar; and

1 teaspoon molasses.

The recipe called for some kind of special thick Thai sweet soy sauce. No idea. But I thought that molasses was both thick and sweet and so I used that. If you have thick Thai sweet soy suace, use 1-1/2 teaspoons. If you don't, 1 teaspoon of molasses worked fine. I had about 8 oz. of frozen, cleaned and tailless shrimp. Use ground pork or ground poultry or cubed very firm tofu if you like. I think already cooked pork or chicken would work too. Cooking time would be a little shorter. 

I started by making the sauce, which was simply measuring everything into a little bowl and whisking it up. 

Then I "cooked" the noodles. This meant putting the noodles into a big bowl and covering them with very hot tap water. 

And here are the noodles in the big bowl with the hot water. 

The recipe called for "sen yai" noodles, which would have taken 40 minutes to soften in hot water. I did not find sen yai noodles. I used off-the-grocery-store-shelf wide pad thai noodles which took about 10 minutes to soften. Use those. 

While the noodles were softening, I cleaned and sliced the bok choy, smushed the garlic and de-seeded and sliced the serranos. 

I heated the oil in a big skillet, and when it was hot, I added the garlic and peppers. After about a minute, I added the shrimp.

This is a little video of the shrimp sizzling away. I put the shrimp in one layer and cooked them for about 2 minutes - until they were done on the bottom. 

After just a couple of minutes, I added the bok choy. I cooked the whole mixture for just a minute or two more. 

I drained and added the rice noodles. 

I stirred everything around with tongs. 

And gave the sauce another whisk and then added it to the skillet and did more mixing with the tongs. 

I plopped everything into a serving dish. I think I added about 1/4 cup of hot water at the end of the mixing with tongs, to make sure that the sauce covered everything. 

I chopped the basil coarsely and sprinkled it over the dish. 

And here it is. Very tasty. Very fast. Plus salad and berries and yogurt. 

Leftovers were good and easily rewarmed in a skillet for lunch. 

Odds and ends

To say it has been a strange week would be an understatement.

We mostly did not leave the house. We are still not doing jumping jacks.

You would think that with all that time I would have gotten a lot of indoor gardening done. Not really. I slept more than usual. I read a few books. We mostly passed the time waiting for healing to occur.

It is now time to plant some more seeds. It is time to take more cuttings from several hoyas. It is time to think about bringing a clivia out of dormancy.

And then there is the big bad world. The Iowa legislature is back. They do not have enough mischief to do. They have done it already, over the last decade. They are now thinking about more ways to keep poor people from buying food. Maybe they should not buy fresh meat. What?

I read where the state of Colorado is going to do away with paying for school lunches. Way to go Colorado.

 We are so far from Colorado.

And then there is Washington DC.

And the war, in winter. Remember the war. It would be both cold and scarey, an unpleasant combination.

We have seen a tiny bit of scarey this last ten days. But it was nothing compared to scarey in 2020. Prospective. It can level you out.

The daytime is coming. Spring will come soon, but never fast enough.

Be safe. Do what you can to make this a better place.

Philip